Jake Auerbach

Saturday

Jake Auerbach

Danger: man at work

My heart is always lifted when a book begins with a map; it is like getting on a plane, we are about to go on an adventure. The first image in this generously illustrated work is a map of Italy 400 years ago; it shows a loose collection of independent nation states which, at that time, stood in the middle of the world. Having, in his book Brunelleschi's Dome, successfully conjured up Florence in the 15th century, Ross King now moves to 16th-century Rome and Michelangelo's astonishing Sistine chapel ceiling; an artistic achievement so stunning that, according to Goethe, we cannot understand what one man is capable of without visiting the chapel.

Saturday

Jake Auerbach

Asking the awkward questions about history and us

Art can raise our spirits, stimulate our intelligence and increase our knowledge; it is therefore disappointing that much of our arts writing is so impenetrable. Academics seem to address their peers and forget us; it is like eavesdropping on a private conversation carried on in a foreign language. Despite this, business is booming. In 1910 the RZpertoire de l'art et d'archZologie had a combined subject and author index of 4,000 entries; there are now about 30,000 entries each year, written by about 22,500 art historians and critics. Professor James Elkins provides these figures. He does so to illustrate that one of the problems with art writing is that there is too much of it, which is ironic coming from a man who publishes two books a year.